


Find You

by RosaLui



Series: PostApocalyptic Zombie AU [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Naruto Spring Kink 2010, Ninja Can Do Ceiling Sex, Reincarnation, Zombie Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-01
Updated: 2010-04-01
Packaged: 2018-01-19 17:10:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1477471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RosaLui/pseuds/RosaLui
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The ninja world is bleeding into modern-day Japan. Hope is fading, the resistance is failing, and, as always, fate draws two boys together like gravity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Find You

**Author's Note:**

> This was beta'd by Nilladriel. She is brilliant.

It was strange, coming back to the orphanage. He'd hated the place as a child - it was confining, made him feel boxed in rather than secure. Drab gray walls stretched upward for six stories; bars covered the windows and a barbed fence surrounded the entire property.

It could have been a nightmare of a house, yet it had not been, not quite. The security was equal to that of a low-level prison, but they had used it to keep the children in and trouble out. The system would have been easy to abuse, but the owners had been some of the rare few who actually gave a damn.

Orphanages in general were good places for photo-ops, but this one – and others like it - had always been shoved to the side. It was a home for society's forgotten children, the messed up ones no one had the patience or ability to deal with. The traumatized, orphaned by violent crime; the troublemakers, unable to stay out of juvie; the addicts, trying for a second chance. It was to orphanages what mental asylums were to hospitals; pushed aside and left to scrape at the bottom of the barrel, because its fellows were embarrassed at its existence.

The children were long gone now, though. Sasuke didn't know how or when it had happened, but it couldn't have been clearer that the place was abandoned. Weeds ran rampant in the yard, and ivy climbed the walls. Some of the glass of the windows was broken, and the shingles were rotting.

The gates were old wrought iron; they'd seemed to tower above him when he was small, stretching up to touch the clouds. Now, the top of the gate was level with his own height. The bars were rusting, but still holding strong.

The house looked old.

"I am definitely," said the man standing next to him, "glad we came here."

"Suigetsu."

"No. I'm thrilled. Especially with all the miles we had to hike through roads full of shit. This place was obviously worth it."

"It's old. That's all."

"Fuckin' A. 'Cause when I fight zombies, you know where I wanna do it? A crumbling granny house, that's where. Military bunker? Fuck no. This place is a fortress."

"Just… stop it." Sasuke felt tired. He always felt tired, nowadays. Everyone did. They were tired because they couldn't sleep. If you slept, you were dead. If you didn't sleep, you got exhausted, got lazy, and then you were dead anyway. It was all the same in the end.

He had not seen this place for seven years; he was an adult now. And no, it was not an impenetrable stronghold, that much was clear. Yet against all his expectations, it felt oddly like coming home.

"You're the one who followed me," he said finally. "Nothing's stopping you from leaving."

He knew Suigetsu wouldn't. The sight of any living human body was a welcome one these days. They had met only days before, two weary travelers on the road just trying to survive. Or rather, Sasuke had been journeying to find this place, and Suigetsu had been running his ass off down a city block with two corpses close on his tail. Sasuke had hit the man's pursuers over the head with a frying pan, and they had been companions ever since.

Sasuke opened the creaking gate and stepped through, and Suigetsu shut it with a clang behind them. Gravel crunched noisily underfoot as they walked up the narrow driveway to the front door. The old brass knocker still hung crooked.

"You know, I admit I'm disappointed." Suigetsu said. "You made it sound like you had some master plan. Now I see you were just being a priss and using big words for 'we're going to hide in a crackhouse.'"

"We're not hiding," Sasuke said, jimmying the doorknob and pushing it open. "It's just a safe place until we can move on."

Inside was much as he remembered it. Old wallpaper, stained rug, and a smell of mildew that washed over them as they entered. A hallway opened up straight ahead, leading to the kitchen and living room. To the left began the narrow wooden staircase, winding up to the first of five residential floors.

Sasuke took a moment to appreciate the look and feet of real carpet beneath his feet.

He hadn't planned to come here. For years he avoided it, even as he drifted from place to place. Then the world had gone insane as the dead began ripping the living apart, and there had been nothing but _run_ and _hide_ and _survive_. Some people were holding out well – in police stations, in yakuza hideouts, in hospitals, in basements. They survived best if they had fortification. Order. They had been driven out of their homes, and weren't used to roughing it on the streets, not like Sasuke was. But he'd been in the area, had wondered about this place, and come to see if anyone was still alive.

Obviously, they were not.

Still, this was as good a place to bunker down as any.

"Bunker down?" Suigetsu sounded incredulous. "And do what, wait for the damn _island-wide quarantine_ to end?"

"We could fight back." Sasuke unconsciously trailed the backs of his fingertips along the peeling wallpaper.

He passed an open door, stopped, and backed up.

A bathroom. It had been a long time since he saw one of those. He pulled off his fingerless gloves and set about washing his hands, not caring as the pipes groaned in protest and spat out freezing water. He glanced up at his reflection in the mirror. He looked scruffy; there were bags under his eyes, his nose had a smudge of dirt, and his hair needed cutting.

"You want to fight fucking zombies." Suigetsu was goggling at him, as if impressed with his insanity. "You're going to get yourself killed."

"We'll probably all be dead soon anyway. If you want to leave, leave." Sasuke discreetly dug grime out from under his fingernails. "But we have a better chance of survival here."

"You think no one has thought of this before? Those _things,_ they _notice_. They notice and they fucking come to eat your brain."

"They don't eat brains. And besides," he added with certainty, "it's only going to be the two of us."

* * *

The first person showed up on their doorstep the next morning. A young woman, barely out of girlhood; she was crying and dirty and terrified and he had let her in, because there was nothing else to do. She said her name was Shuuko. It would only be for a night, she promised.

The house was not lacking in space - there were three beds in each room, and twelve rooms on each of the top five floors – so he gave her the room between his and Suigetsu's. He figured it would be the easiest way to protect her if something happened.

A night turned into a week, and then she was helping them stack crates and crates of nonperishables in the basement as they raided every abandoned grocery they could find.

The next week it was a brother and sister, a mathematician and a construction worker. Suddenly, Sasuke was able to relegate the calculation of resources to the former, while the sister salvaged scrap wood and set about fortifying the house.

Then there was Takeshi, the college kid from Toudai, who outbraved them all when he ventured into the basement and got the generator working. Karin, a slip of a girl who had been attacked on the road and fought back with a cattle prod, a hairdryer, and her claw-like fake nails. Akito, a salaryman who arrived ashen-faced, clutching his pet dog and a handful of photographs. And not long after, Grandfather Taro, an old man with rheumy eyes and a limp who waxed philosophical and talked about the lives they had yet to lead.

"If we want to look to the future," he said once, "we have to consider the political ramifications of this for our government."

Sasuke shook his head. "Our government is dead."

Grandfather eyed him from over his teacup. "No faith in the system, Sasuke-kun?"

"No, he means literally dead," Suigetsu clarified. "As in, the zombies ate their brains."

"They don't _eat_ brains, you waste of space," Karin snapped, and then their argument was interrupted by the familiar sound of panicked banging at the door.

By week seven, Sasuke had started up a resident roster and stopped pretending that any of them were leaving any time soon.

They came, and they stayed, because they had nowhere else to go.

* * *

_We are never_ , Sasuke decided, _going to do this again_.

Communication had been down since the first week of the attack. Phone lines were mostly ripped away, internet service providers unreachable, so Sasuke dug up an old short-wave CB radio and walkie-talkies from the attic. They were ancient, but they worked.

It was over the radio waves they first heard the frantic pleas of a group of thirteen, blockaded in to an abandoned library with a rolling pin, a shotgun, and no way out.

But night wasn't safe to travel. At night, it was harder to see _them_ before they set upon you. Yet leaving the people to die was not an option, so Sasuke had picked up a baseball bat and headed for the door. This had caused an uproar and the immediate formation of a group of five, including himself, armed with everything from crowbars to a nail gun.

And then some fuckhead had suggested that they take the sewers.

It was disgusting, but they had expected that. They had plastic bags over their boots, scarves tied as masks, and only one flashlight – all they could spare, not knowing when they'd find batteries and bulbs again. Karin, whom they had left in the middle of a rant about tapeworm and hydrogen sulfide poisoning, was standing by at home, furiously compiling an impromptu biohazard kit.

Therefore, the fact that they were quite literally wading through _shit_ was not exactly the problem.

No. Apparently, the sewers were where these things _lived._

And now they were running. Just running, Tsugumi leading the way with the flashlight and Sasuke furiously shoving them ahead of him as he took up the rear because _didn't they understand that they had to run faster or they were all going to die_? And then a writhing, rotting mass of _things_ swarmed out of an adjoining tunnel and they were just _fucked_.

Mei was dragged shrieking down into the muck ( _she had a brother, Sasuke was going to have to tell him, what the hell was he going to say?_ ), but there was light up ahead now, hope in the shape of an open manhole cover -

" _Faster!"_ Sasuke yelled at them.

Spinning on his heel and whipping the bat sloppily out of his belt in one motion, he bashed it against the head of the first and elbowed the second in the face before they encircled him like a swarm. Then he could do nothing but duck and weave and hope his idiot team kept running, twisting wildly just to keep the deads' grasping hands the hell away from his neck.

He was alone now, and the darkness was all-encompassing, pressing around him, seeping under his skin. He thrived in it. Hands were everywhere, and he lashed out blindly as he felt teeth sink into his arm, crushing the bat against a stomach. He held back a retch as warmth washed over his hands and ducked and _ran_ , back towards the entrance they had come from.

He was nearly there, light in sight, when something rotting wrapped around his ankle. He fell, got a mouthful of something truly vile before –

" _GET OFF HIM YOU ZOMBIE FREAKS_."

A wobbly flashlight and a group of shit-covered people, Sasuke decided, had never looked so beautiful. Ripping the disgusting scarf away from his mouth, he stepped back and watched as the rotting corpses were beaten into the ground by his team – his stupid, _stupid_ team that had defied common sense to return to him.

They clambered out the manhole and collapsed on the asphalt outside, in the middle of the thankfully abandoned street.

Fresh air. Sasuke gulped it down as Akito crawled on all fours to the manhole and threw up impressively.

"New rule," the man said finally. He liked making new rules, as if it put his life in order. "We'll follow your orders, brat. But no one gets left behind."

"Mei got left behind," Tsugumi mumbled. He was crying, clean streaks running through the grime on his face.

Sasuke was too busy trying to figure out what he meant by "follow his orders" to object. Instead, he looked at his watch. Three hours since the call had come in. The family was almost certainly dead.

"We're still going," he said, and wiped the bat off against his jacket.

"All of us?"

"Someone needs to do cleanup." Burn them, he didn't say. They always had to burn the bodies, or they would just get up again.

* * *

It hadn't been long before they managed to establish contact with other towns. To the north near Aomori, the heavy snows were aiding to protect giant refugee camps; meanwhile, concentrated (in?) Tojimbo and Izushi, they established enough contacts to prove that the population of Honshu was not entirely lost. Calls coming in for advice and guidance became frequent.

With no extra space available, Sasuke slept sitting up with his back to the wall, and was woken more often than not by the panicked shriek of his name from the bottom of the stairs. The House was filled to bursting, with two hundred fifteen people at last count and still growing. Indoor plumbing had failed a few weeks in. They washed with buckets now. The rooms and hallways smelled of sweat, and toilets were makeshift ones necessitating a temporary loss of dignity.

And with so many people, they had inevitably drawn notice. It was like being under siege; they would hear them before they came, the screams and roars, and then see them, pouring down the alleyway, dripping blood and missing limbs, flesh peeling away from their bones as they ran. They fought them from the other side of the gate. Every time, the people inside had to watch and wait, see if this time one of the dead would try to scale the wrought iron, if the defenses would be overwhelmed, if they would get inside.

"If you could have just one weapon to fight with," Suigetsu asked one day as they dragged themselves back inside, bleeding and bruised and having left piles of the doubly dead mounded against the fence, "what would it be?"

"An antidote," Karin said instantly, already passing out bandages.

"It's not a _disease_ , stupid," Suigetsu said. "Is it, Sasuke?"

"No." He didn't know what it was, but it wasn't a virus. He'd been bitten enough times to know.

"See? Our fearless leader says it's not."

Karin ignored this. "What about you, Sasuke-kun? What would you choose?"

"The guns work fine." All two of them that they owned.

Suigetsu snorted. "Fuck that shit. I want a flamethrower."

Sasuke kind of did, too.

As they neared the five-month mark in The House, the days never seemed to end. They lived in shifts, worked and ate at odd hours and kept lookouts round the clock. There had been a lull in attacks recently, as if the dead had been directed towards an easier target, and for the first time, Sasuke was able to sleep in.

"It's 4 am." Karin met him at the bottom of the stairs when he finally awoke and descended. Her eyes were red. She likely hadn't been sleeping. "We have a call from Akita."

"Give them Yamamoto's line," Sasuke said, raking his hair roughly out of his eyes and blinking in the bright light. "He's in Yuzawa. The number is on The List."

'The List' was their record of all the other surviving groups they had come into contact with. How many people were in them, where they were, and what their channel was. Sometimes, they were able to add new ones. Sometimes not. Sasuke was always the one who made himself pick up a pen and cross the names off.

"I will. And Sasuke, the group from Takayama still hasn't made contact yet."

"Damn."

"…never going to go back to normal after this?" Suigetsu was saying as they entered the kitchen. He appeared to be in dialog with someone over the CB. "The country is fucked. We win, right, and then what? Anyone who knows how to fix anything is stumbling around outside, tripping over his own intestines."

"That's disgusting, Suigetsu," Karin snapped. She was scanning their roster, trying to see who had gotten off shift when, and who wouldn't be too exhausted to accompany them.

Suigetsu scowled at her over his shoulder. "You're just bitter because you'll never got your job as a stripper back."

"I was a nurse, you disgusting –"

"Akito, Mina, and Masa," Sasuke interrupted, He really didn't want to take any more of their bickering. "They got back two days ago and have done nothing since. Suigetsu, you're coming with us."

The group from Takayama, of which Karin spoke, had – despite Sasuke's many attempts to dissuade them – been journeying eastward to join them. The fact that The House had run out of beds long ago and Sasuke himself was sleeping in a food closet did not seem to dissuade them; their leader was brash, overconfident from having survived this long and blathering nonsense about "Joining forces to overcome the enemy."

They had been scheduled to arrive hours ago.

And as it turned out, the group had come close to reaching them. Twelve blocks away, less than half an hours walk, Sasuke found them.

Or rather, found the bodies. He wasn't sure how many – less than fifty, more than twenty – and they looked like they had been through a war. Most victims were strangled to death, bitten or dismembered; but these were different. They had been felled by puncture and slash wounds, aimed flawlessly at vital spots.

And there was a figure walking among them. Black cloak, hanging heavy in the early morning humidity; black sandaled feet, stepping on the dead as they trekked sedately across the fleshy carpet.

"Who the fuck –" Suigetsu started, before Sasuke slammed his palm over his mouth and pulled him away, hiding them behind the corner of the nearest building. He could feel the other's warm breath on his palm.

"Don't," Sasuke whispered, "move." His voice was shaking. His voice never shook. Fucking dead people with half their limbs missing and no eyeballs stumbling after him, and his _voice. Never. Shook_. But this –

There was a buzz in the air. Like electricity, or an inaudible thrumming bass that he could feel in his bones.

Cautiously, he leaned around the corner of the wall and looked. The man was rummaging in his robe now, fishing for something in a waist pouch –

 _Ofuda_? Sasuke had two seconds to wonder, before the little square of white paper was flung onto a body below and the man in black did something with his hands –

The hair on the back of Sasuke's neck prickled, and then there was a flash of light and _power_ exploded outward like a pressure wave.

Then the body on the ground twitched.

"That's how they do it," Masa muttered from behind him, piled in close like the others to peer over Sasuke's shoulder in horrified fascination.

The whole group was moving now, twitching, dead eyes opening and heads lifting from where they lay on the ground.

"We have to move," Suigetsu said urgently, ripping Sasuke's hand away. "We have to get out of here, he's going to see u- _fuck!_ "

The man in black was standing casually at the mouth of the alleyway, not five feet away. They hadn't even seen him move. "No need for such alarm," he said, hard brown eyes looking upon them with amusement.

Sasuke heard the others turn and run, heard their footsteps in frantic retreat, but –

"Sasuke," someone was snarling at him. They were tugging at his arm. "Sasuke, _move_."

"You can feel it," the man in black was chuckling. "The others can't, but you can. Feel it in your bones, mesmerizing you, the raw power swamping you, drowning you, dragging you down."

" _Fucking move_ ," Suigetsu fairly screamed in his ear and then with a great yank had him stumbling, running away, limbs moving on automatic as they pelted down the pavement.

But they were slow. So, so slow.

He could practically feel the man's eyes burning onto their backs, like a hawk letting its prey run for a while just to amuse him, and shit, _shit, they were all going to die_.

Sasuke glanced back, wanting to see his death coming no matter how much it frightened him, wanting to look it in the eye –

A blur of orange. A streak of brightness, that came out of nowhere and swept the man in black out of sight.

Three seconds passed where all Sasuke could hear was his own ragged breathing as he stared at the empty road behind them, eyes wide –

And then something exploded. Sasuke and Suigetsu threw themselves to the ground as the deafening boom shook the buildings around them, plaster raining down, wind roaring over their heads.

Ignoring the hands trying to hold him back, Sasuke ran back to the mouth of the alleyway, trying to see who that was, _what_ that was that had just saved them.

But there was nothing, nothing at all.

They stumbled back to The House in a daze. Karin was waiting for them, and she slapped him as soon as he walked in the door. She was standing stiffly, a walkie-talkie clenched in bloodless fingers, glasses fogging from the wetness gathered on her eyelashes.

They wanted an explanation from him. That much he could tell, as they sat around the kitchen table, bowls of stew going cold in front of them.

But he had nothing for them.

"We know how they make them, at least," Akito offered. "We were right that it's no virus, and it's not passed from person to person. It's those _ofuda_. They're religious," the salary man explained to the confused faces around the table. "Used by priests."

"You don't think this could have religious basis?" Karin suggested.

It was a theoretical possibility. A megalomaniac with some sort of referendum on ethnic cleansing, or a madman with ideas about mass resurrection. But -

"He wasn't a priest." Sasuke spoke up for the first time.

"Maybe," Suigetsu offered, "they're aliens."

"I'm going for a walk," Sasuke snapped, rising out of his chair with such violence that it tipped over backwards.

Going for a walk alone was a stupid thing to do, especially after what had just happened. But some part of him needed to get out, needed to go back and try to figure out what had just happened.

He slipped quietly and unnoticed into the small closet that acted as their accumulated weapons store, and slipped one of the four handguns in their possession under his jacket, tucked into his belt. A knife in one boot, a switchblade in his pocket, and he stepped out into the noonday sun, past the gate and onto the streets.

Retracing the path was easy, and it allowed him time to think. That man, the man in black, had felt different. Like a different life force. Not alien, or anything ridiculous like they were suggesting inside. Just… human, but with _more_. Though more what, he couldn't say.

"Hey!"

The voice came from behind him as he rounded the last corner, like a signal to halt. It was a casual shout in a young voice, full of charming roughness and nothing like the hard voice of the man in black. Sasuke could hear footsteps approaching him at a run. Whoever it was had been following him. He turned in time to see the speaker round the corner and come skidding to a stop in front of him.

"What do you want?" Sasuke asked roughly, as the boy – because it _was_ a boy – doubled over and panted in what seemed like exaggerated exhaustion for such a short chase.

But the face that he saw when the boy finally straightened exuded honesty and friendliness so openly that Sasuke wondered momentarily, and rather cruelly, if he was a halfwit.

And then suddenly, with no warning, every ounce of cheer in the figure abruptly drained as the boy _looked_ at Sasuke, really saw him for the first time. The boy was staring at him, blue eyes enormous from behind shaggy blond fringe, mouth gaping. "S-" he began, and the rest of the word was lost in soundless mouthing.

"What do you want?" Sasuke said again, more slowly this time.

"…Sasuke." The word was almost inaudible. It was more _breathed_ than spoken, and from where they stood, faces barely feet apart, Sasuke could see himself reflected in the other's eyes. The boy was wearing an offensively bright orange tracksuit, sleeves pushed up casually, showing extremely toned forearms and strong-boned wrists. Tan skin. Three odd-looking, curved scars on each cheek.

Orange, a part of his brain niggled at him. Just before the explosion, he had seen orange.

"Are you looking for The House?" It was the only plausible explanation he could think of. "Did someone give you my name?" It happened, sometimes. Other survivors knew his name because he was the one who snapped at them across the radio until they saw sense. _No, a food raid at midnight is not a good idea. No, you cannot live in tents. No, you will not survive if you try to launch an offensive attack. Yes, you will die._

"….Who are you?" The words were quiet, but something in the boy's voice warned against lying.

"You just said my name."

"No." Dark eyes – they had been blue a second before, he knew that, he was sure of it – met his, and something feral in them made him want to step back. "No, I didn't. That name is _not yours_ , and I want to know _who the fuck_ you are. Right. Now."

"I'm perfectly aware of what my own name is," Sasuke said icily. "Have you got some kind of a problem?" Maybe his original evaluation of 'halfwit' hadn't been so far off the mark after all.

Before he could blink, strong hands had wrapped around his arms in a vice-like grip, stormy eyes were scanning him like he was a lie, like he couldn't possibly exist, and then suddenly, the pressure was gone. The boy was backing away, mumbling to himself. "No. No no no. You're –"

And then he was gone.

* * *

A week passed. Life went on.

Sasuke felt as though he was waiting for something to happen.

When Karin woke him one night, telling him that an extremely rude young man had shown up at their door demanding to speak to him, he knew exactly who it was.

When he entered the impromptu meeting room that was their kitchen, his first thought was that the boy looked oddly incongruous sitting there at their tiny table. He was all brightness and loud, clashing colors. He didn't belong in the drab, sad little room.

Sasuke leaned against the door frame and waited.

The room was silent but for the infuriating ticking of the mantle clock, and the boy's slow, steady breathing as their eyes met.

Fifty-three seconds passed.

"Hi," the boy said finally. "I'm Naruto."

Sasuke said nothing.

"Sorry about before." He seemed to shake himself and come to life, hand rubbing the back of his head awkwardly as an embarrassed grin spread over his face. "It was kinda, ah. Just. You know. It was… stuff."

The boy, Sasuke decided, was an idiot. "Explain."

"It's complicated."

"Do I look like I care?"

"I was… angry," he said finally. "I'm just… That group of people, the ones who died… I'd been, uh, with them. Traveling. And, uh. We'd all kind of thought salvation lay with, you know, with you guys. And then they all died, and… I was just angry."

He was lying. Sasuke was almost positive. "You were one of the ones coming from Chitose?"

"Sure."

"Chitose is in Hokkaido. Try again."

Naruto made a grumpy face. "I only fell in with them towards the end, okay?"

"Bullshit. Stop lying."

"I'm not! Geez, you're such a bast-" For a reason Sasuke couldn't even begin to fathom, the boy froze mid-word looked away, that _look_ appearing in his eyes again.

"Where did you know my name from?"

Naruto laughed. It was bitter, and it didn't suit him in the slightest. "Just heard it somewhere, is all. So, uh. I'm asking to join the resistance, I guess. I can fight –"

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"Fight." The idiot made vague motions with his hands, as if demonstrating to a four-year-old. "You know. With knives, and all?"

"No. What did the hell did you mean, the resistance? There is no resistance."

"Sure there is! You!"

"Don't be stupid," Sasuke snapped. "There is no resistance, there are groups of destitute people _surviving_ until they get found and overwhelmed and join the flood of the dead ripping this island to shreds. Where the _hell_ did you hear something so ridiculous?"

"Everyone's saying it." There was no lie in the boy's voice this time, and a warm smile was tugging at his lips. "That there're survivors, yeah, but it's this little group in Tokyo that's keeping everyone alive, coordinating everything, taking people in and fighting back!"

"You're delusional."

"Hey, hey! Can I be your lieutenant?"

"No."

* * *

One new addition of the household should have been nothing. With over hundreds already, Naruto should have been lost amongst the masses.

But he wasn't. He was loud and bright and full of energy where the rest of them seemed to be made of sweat and exhaustion and shaky nerves.

It was summed up infuriatingly well when Karin stumbled into the kitchen one morning, bleary-eyed, and asked if anyone else had noticed that it had been sunnier for the past few days.

And yet Naruto still looked at Sasuke sometimes, like the mere sight of him made him want to run as far away as he could, and at the same time latch and never let go.

Karin thought he still blamed Sasuke for not stopping the massacre in time. Suigetsu thought he had a crush. Sasuke thought they were both idiots.

"Where are you from?" Naruto asked him one night. It was late, and his voice was quiet. The small circle of golden light cast by their single candle in the darkness threw everything into relief; the rough wood of the dark brown table, the wind against the house, the ticking of the clock. Naruto's soft breathing.

"Why?"

"I just wanna know," Naruto shrugged.

"Here."

"Tokyo?"

"No, _here_. This place. Some things don't change, no matter how far you run."

"Yeah. I guess they don't." Naruto's hand rubbed roughly at his eyes for a moment. "So… you've lived here since you were a kid?"

"I haven't been here for years. I ran away when I was twelve." He'd never told anyone this before. It had never really mattered.

"Never got adopted?"

"Once. By an old woman. She made me pancakes. She kept cats. Twelve of them." Sasuke liked cats. "But I ended up back here." Because she'd died. He didn't add that part.

"Was it worth it?" Naruto's gaze was trained studiously on the table. "Running away?"

"It was a stupid idea. I was a stupid kid."

The table was small. Leaning in this close to each other, Sasuke could read Naruto like an open book, see every emotion flickering across his eyes, read the shape of his eyebrows and the downturn of his mouth. He looked half angry, half in pain, and it annoyed Sasuke that he couldn't figure out why.

As if a spasm had suddenly gone through him, Naruto surged forward, stopping with their faces only inches apart, eyes squeezed shut, brow furrowed. Sasuke could feel warm breath on his lips.

He waited.

And nothing happened. Naruto drew back and walked away.

They didn't talk about it. Not really.

"If you knew someone," Naruto tried to explain when Sasuke cornered him, "that… that looked a lot like another person. I mean, not a lot like. Exactly like. Is it… betraying the first person to be with them?"

Sasuke stared at him. "You knew someone who looked like me."

Naruto shifted. "I didn't say that."

"Then stop blowing smoke out your ass and talk to me!"

"I'm trying!" Naruto's fist hit the wall with a loud crack and dented it. "But I don't know – I don't _know_! I don't know what is going on or who you are -"

"I'm _me_. Sasuke Uchiha. I doubt your friend had my _name_."

"I can't do this," was all Naruto said. "I can't."

Sasuke left without another word.

* * *

When he came downstairs late one night, only to be told that Naruto had left to go zombie hunting all by himself, Sasuke finally realized that all the stupid behavior could be explained away by one simple fact.

Naruto had a fish for a brain. A _fish_.

"Stay here," he snarled, grabbing a crowbar – he was feeling a bit vicious – from the closet and stomping to the door. "I'm going after him."

"Not alone you aren't," Karin scolded him. "I don't care about the meathead blond, but I am not letting you get killed on my watch. Stay here, I will be _right back_."

"Fine." Sasuke waited until she had retreated up the stairs, then turned and walked out the door.

It was darker than most nights – a storm had been threatening for days, and thick black clouds covered the sky, blotting out the stars and dimming the moon.

All he had to do was follow the noises. In between the slow, deep rumbles of thunder in the distance, he could hear shouting and crashing from somewhere beyond this city block.

And there he found him. Naruto was backed into the alleyway, surrounded on all sides and bare-handed, and if this was some sort of heroic suicide attempt, Sasuke was going to kill him.

He ran into the crowd without a second thought, aimed for the first figure he saw and swung. The thud of the body hitting the ground and the explosion of blood that followed alerted Naruto to his presence. His eyes went wide.

"You weren't supposed to follow me!" He yelled angrily.

"And why the hell would I follow your orders?"

"You _jerk_! Why are you so – argh!"

Sasuke turned in time to see a giant of a man bearing down on him, cleaver held in a hand that was missing half its fingers. Sasuke swung again, aiming for his head, and bashed until the thing stopped moving. He turned, swung, ducked under a frighteningly shark-like attempt to bite at his face, and came up kicking. He could feel his boots slipping on the ground, slick from gore and the slight misting of rain that had just begun, but he kept his balance and ran, tackling two more from behind and cracking their heads against the pavement. Then everything was just a blur as they closed in from all sides. He could feel the skin on his hands ripping, blistering between calluses as he swung again – another cloud went over the moon and it was fucking nearly impossible to see, faint drizzle clouding his vision and making it harder to grip his weapon -

A body flew past him. Sasuke pinned a zombie to the ground through its compatriot and turned to stare, mouth gaping, at what he could only describe as Naruto going absolutely apeshit.

"What the fuck," he tried to say, before another zombie was flung high and wide, limbs askew as it sailed over a garden fence and crashed through the broken window of an abandoned flat.

And with that, they were done. Nearly a dozen of them, and Sasuke had only killed four. Meaning Naruto had taken on… six, with only his bare hands?

"You didn't have to come, y'know." Naruto's hair and clothes made him easily visible even this late at night, and he was hopping on one foot, trying to detangle his sandal from where it was caught in a mess of Sasuke didn't even want to _know_ what. "I had this down."

Before he could come up with the proper words to express his rage, Naruto looked up at him and grinned a little. Covered in dirt and mud and blood and _rot_ , and a grin still lit up his face.

The rain was coming down harder now. It was gathering like dewdrops in the wisps ends of Naruto's hair.

 _Idiot_.

"We worked really good together, though," Naruto continued. "I didn't… really think we would, I guess."

"Whatever. We need to be getting back." And Sasuke needed bandages on his hands, which were bloody and starting to sting.

"Yeah. But I've got something to show you first."

Sasuke's confusion only mounted when Naruto came to stand next to him, slinging an arm over the back of his shoulders and leaning in close to point up at the sky. Even through their clothes, his skin felt warm.

"That's rain, Naruto. I've seen it before."

"Stop being a jerkface and listen for a minute. I never got to tell you this, okay, so I'm gonna tell you now. And you're gonna listen to me."

That didn't make any sense, but Sasuke didn't try to protest. He looked up. The downpour was getting stronger; cold, but not too cold in the humid summer night, soaking his skin and washing his face slowly of blood flecks and mud.

"There's always something else out there," Naruto was saying into his ear. "There's always something else waiting for you, even if you feel like you're trapped."

"Is there a point to this?"

"Look, I know how you get. You're stuck here now, and life is dark and it's complete shit and it's a struggle to move on each day, but that doesn't mean you can stop trying, okay? Promise me. Promise me you'll always keep moving forward, no matter what happens."

"I'm not going to crawl into a corner and commit suicide, you moron," he growled, trying and failing to figure out where the hell this was coming from.

"No, but I've seen… people… I've seen them when they think there's nothing left for them. When they think that… that life has failed them and they've failed life and it means they lose hope and go crazy and do _reckless stupid shit_ , yeah?"

Sasuke stared at him, trying to decipher that expression through the dark and utterly failing. But he had never heard the other boy speak so seriously, so he wasn't lying when he said, "I'm not going anywhere, moron. There are people who need me here."

He hadn't even seen Naruto move before he found himself pulled into a tight hug, plastered chest to chest with Naruto's arms wrapped around his shoulders and back like he was never, ever going to let go.

He didn't understand it. He didn't understand a lot of things about the man hugging him, especially when it came to their interactions with each other. But his life had not been so completely horrible that he didn't have any heart left at all.

Slowly, grudgingly, he raised the arm that wasn't pinned between their bodies and placed his hand on Naruto's back as he let his eyes fall shut.

He could feel the other's heartbeat.

Hugging in the rain. It wasn't something he'd ever have thought he'd do, but maybe, as Naruto's natural heat seeped into him and warm breath washed over his ear, it wasn't so bad.

Naruto was like the sun in the middle of a cesspit. He didn't belong here. Half of Sasuke didn't want him here, didn't want a breath of fresh air when he'd been so ready to live the rest of his life without it.

But the rain felt heavenly. It had been half a year since they last had running water. And here it was, running down his skin and through his clothes. Ages of muck and sweat being cleansed, being replaced by _clean_.

He realized vaguely that his shoes were getting soaked.

Well, it was probably good for them.

He opened his eyes and found Naruto staring at him, blond hair matted over intensely focused eyes and hanging in dripping pieces across his nose and cheekbones.

Then Naruto was backing off and pulling away, yanking his t-shirt off, wringing it out and leaving it in a sopping pile against the ground. "Might as well clean off," he said with a cheeky grin. "Natural shower, and all that."

Sasuke's hands went to the edge of his own beat-up long sleeves and yanked it up over his head.

It was in that brief moment, where his arms where still tangled in the sleeves and his vision blocked by fabric, that he felt Naruto's mouth on his chest. He froze, and yanked the shirt off his head, throwing it to the floor to look and see his own torso – so pale, both by genetics and months out of the sun – and Naruto, mouth open and trailing downwards, head ducked, eyes half-lidded.

He didn't push him off. It was human and warm and new and different. It was good and whole, and that was so rare in w world where everything seemed so rotten that you were sure it was only a matter of time until you were next. Naruto's left hand came up to grasp his right shoulder, and his right arm wrapped around Sasuke's waist as he knelt, tongue sliding across Sasuke's left nipple and down. The sight of it made his breath come short.

He shook himself loose and sank down, lips meeting Naruto's demandingly as they fell in a pile on the dirty, rough pavement, half crouching, half draped over each other. Elbows poked into sides and legs shifted awkwardly; they tipped over backwards with Naruto on the bottom and the back of Sasuke's head blocking his face from the spray.

It was almost brutal, the kiss; Naruto bit at him, arms still wrapped around his torso as Sasuke clutched at his hair, teeth sharp and tongues wet. He could feel the breath between them, the desperation.

He knew they could both feel reality slipping away.

* * *

 

* * *

 

It became routine, for the two of them to venture out together. They worked, outsiders observed, like two halves of a whole; perfectly in sync, even if they fought all the way. And so it was that one afternoon, alone on a food raid, they were ambushed between the canned vegetables and potato chips.

In the end, Sasuke wasn't exactly sure how it had happened. Naruto had turned to face them, was bashing them in the face with a can of beans and he didn't see the one racing towards him with unnatural speed, a new one, a fresh one. Sasuke saw the knife in its hands – and before he knew what he was doing he had moved on muscle memory, tacking Naruto to the ground and bracing himself as the rotting body came down upon him. He caught one wrist but the other hand slipped through his fingers, and he felt a sharp pain above his left eye. Suddenly he was blinking through blood.

Then in a blink the two were gone, he was left panting, face aching, elbows and shoulders scabbed where he had hit the pavement hard.

"Never," Naruto was panting above him, "never take a hit for me, don't you ever, don't you dare, I will kill you myself if you fucking do something so shit stupid again! _Swear_ to me -"

"No." Sasuke picked himself up off the ground. The cut on his forehead was bleeding freely. "You don't own me, and I'm not your pet."

"You're not allowed to die!"

"Blow me."

"Yeah, okay," was all he heard before he found himself slammed into the wall, shoulders cracking painfully into the plaster as a mouth descended on his. Chapped lips met chapped lips, teeth scraping and biting down. Naruto tugged Sasuke's jaw down with his fingers and stuck his tongue in his mouth. They stood locked, heads tilted, Naruto sealed to him as if he was trying to climb inside him and stay there permanently. He felt hot puffs of breath on his cheek and the tickle of long blond eyelashes.

He closed his eyes.

They were breathing in tandem now, and Sasuke's hands had somehow become bunched in Naruto's shirt when he hadn't been paying attention.

It was Naruto who pulled away first, cheeks flushing as he tilted his head back and stared at Sasuke.

"Your mouth is red," he mumbled finally.

"You were just sucking on it."

"…You can't die," Naruto mumbled against his lips. "I'm not gonna let you."

"You really are thick."

"Yeah." Naruto's voice caught. "Sometimes I am. I'm an idiot, I assume everything will just go the way it's supposed to. I used to be _so fucking naïve_. But you…."

"If you say I'm your second chance," Sasuke said, pulling away, "then this is over. Right now."

Naruto said nothing.

"You don't get to tell me who I am. You don't get to rule my life. You think I knew I would last this long? That anyone would? I thought I'd be _dead_. So if I want to save you, I can fucking well do it. It is not your choice to make for me."

"Agh! You never listened, why would you never _listen_? It was my right to try and stop you from being stupid!"

" _Stop talking in past tense_!"

Naruto growled and turned away. "Well, whatever. You can't stop me from trying. I'm _never_ gonna stop." And he punched the wall the Sasuke's left, cracking the paint, and bit Sasuke on the corner of the mouth, tips of sweaty blond hair dragging through the blood running down half of Sasuke's face and tinting his fringe pink.

The kiss wasn't inexperienced, there was just more enthusiasm than technique, like everything else Naruto did. And overenthusiastic, Sasuke added as a hand dropped abruptly to the front of his dirty jeans and squeezed, Naruto's eyes closing as he panted in Sasuke's face and wormed a hand inside. Sasuke let his head fall back against the wall with a painful _thud_ as he tried to get his breathing under control.

Then Naruto's face dropped away and the boy was kneeling in front of him, fumbling hands yanking at buttons and zippers as he leaned forward and licked Sasuke's stomach just below the beltline.

"What do you think you're doi- nnh."

His pants were yanked open and dragged down – he heard Naruto let out a breathless chuckle, as if surprised he didn't wear underwear when their washing situation was what it was – and his grip tightened spastically in blond hair as Naruto nuzzled him.

He felt hot breath and a tongue, and couldn't stop the quiet panting that escaped his mouth as his head swam and heat flooded his body. Then Naruto was dropping lower, the fingers of his free hand encircling Sasuke's balls and tugging them gently to his mouth.

"Ff-"

He could _hear_ the sound of Naruto's tongue, feel it trailing its way up. He shuddered, head falling forward, shoulders hunched as warm wetness lapped at the head of his cock.

It had been so, so long and he couldn't stop the helpless jerk of his hips towards Naruto's mouth, silently asking for more. He had the brief glimpse of a roguish grin flashing across the other's face before lips encircled him. He braced a shuddering arm against Naruto's shoulder and he felt his own breathing turn ragged as that tongue moved along the underside of his cock. He could hear it, wet and sliding – he finally forced himself to open his eyes and saw Naruto, blue eyes glazed, cheeks flushed and mouth stretched wide, head in constant motion and fringe brushing Sasuke's stomach, nose burying itself in dark curls.

It hit him blindingly, crashing over him in waves as his breath caught in his throat, choking out a throaty cry.

He was left breathing brokenly, shaking slightly as his body cooled and his brain began working again.

 _Oh_ , he remembered after a moment. _Naruto_. "Do you – let me –"

"Uh, yeah." Naruto sounded sheepish. "I kinda, uh. Took care of that."

He glanced down and saw Naruto's hand down his own pants, wrapped around himself, sticky and wet.

"Right." Deep breaths. "We'll fix that next time."

* * *

But it didn't take long for the universal importance of Naruto's arrival to be overshadowed by other things.

It began one evening with a confused transmission from Izushi; the attacks on them had come to a full stop. Within the next twenty-four hours, they heard the same thing from everyone on The List.

And they kept finding bodies. Killed and burned, heaped in giant piles in streets. Zombie bodies, killed by some unknown, hopefully friendly force.

"Maybe it's special forces from South Korea or the US," Karin had suggested. "Maybe they're breaking the quarantine to help us."

Sasuke just snorted.

"Maybe," Suigetsu said in patronizing tones, "they're ninja."

Naruto splurted his soup all over the table.

* * *

Sasuke should have known it was too good to last. This was not the way the world worked, not the way his life went.

It should have been a regular patrol of the streets – little more than a stroll now that so much of the danger seemed to be gone – but Sasuke had known the second it had gone wrong.

He had seen Naruto tense, seen his eyes grow wide and then found himself being flung away, sailing backward and crashing into the side of an apartment complex as the street where he'd just been standing exploded.

It was a man like the other one they had seen so long ago – the man in black. This one was older. Wilder.

He looked insane.

He cackled, _laughed_ at Naruto, asked him what he was doing protecting the civilian.

The _civilian_.

Was yelling elatedly, about how _"Your compatriots thought they had my tail but I lost them, lost them long ago, they're lost like headless children and I can make more puppets, and more puppets, all mine, all mine!"_

And that was all Sasuke needed. It clicked, somehow, into place – not everything, but enough.

His head was spinning, aching from where he had hit the wall and his vision was blurring, but the thought was very clear in his head. _Naruto is like them. Naruto is like them._

Naruto… was the orange blur that saved them all from the first man in black.

And all he could do was stare as Naruto roared, power exploding out like a warping star as he held wind in his hands and moved too fast for Sasuke's eyes to see –

When the dust had settled, the wild man was dead, and Naruto was standing, staring at Sasuke like a dog that _knew_ it was about to be kicked.

But they had no time to speak.

Because Naruto's compatriots, as they had been called, had not been far behind after all. They were fourteen men and women in black and green, appearing so suddenly from the opposite road that it looked as though they'd used magic.

"Good job, Naruto." The speaker was taller than the rest, with a lazy voice, an approving tone, and a gravity-defying shock of gray hair. "That was the last one. Mission over."

Mission over. _Mission over_?

Fuck that.

Sasuke shoved himself upright, managing to stand with one hand braced on the wall next to him. But this drew attention to himself, and before he could demand to know what was going on, the entire group erupted into shouting.

Naruto was standing between them, yelling, explaining – but it was no good. Before he could move an inch the gray-haired man was standing in front of him. Then the world swirled black and red, and he knew no more.

* * *

Sasuke woke up in a cell. His head was aching, pounding from the inside as if his brain was trying to push out of his skull, and – he tried to wiggle his arms – his wrists were cuffed in front of him.

Then he tried to sit up and felt, for the first time, the blindfold wrapped neatly around his eyes.

"You're awake." The voice was one Sasuke recognized; a smooth, lazy baritone.

"Who are you and where the fuck am I," he said hoarsely. He felt too exhausted, too confused, to get truly angry right now. His memories were coming back, of people in strange uniforms and sudden flashes of light.

There was nothing but silence, and then he heard a sigh. "My name is Kakashi," the voice said neutrally. "I'm going to take your blindfold off now. No surprises, hmm?"

"I don't have any idea what you're talking about."

"No." The man's voice was thoughtful. "I don't think you do."

The cloth band was taken away and the light felt as though it was piercing his eyes directly. He groaned.

"Crossing worlds isn't fun," Kakashi said as if in agreement. "And I've got a bucket."

Sasuke managed to hold out for three seconds through pure willpower before he doubled over and hurled embarrassingly into the plastic can in Kakashi's hands.

"Hmm. Little Sasuke-kun throwing up. It's been a while since I've seen that."

"You've just met me," Sasuke managed. His mouth felt disgusting.

"You asked where you were," the man went on, ignoring his words and handing him a small glass of water. "For lack of a better term, you're in another reality. Ah, I'm sorry. Was that bad timing?"

Sasuke wiped water off his chin and glowered.

"The world you know does not belong on our maps, and vice versa. A lot of things about these worlds are the same. Other things are not."

"Such as?"

"We're more powerful than you. Naruto said you could feel it."

That buzzing in the air. Yes.

"In any case, many people here lead normal lives. Others have the potential for this power. And we, effectively, rule our world. As ninja."

"And Naruto is one of you."

"Yes. If you want to know where you are, I can show you. But if you'd rather stay here –"

"No." His head was still swimming, but his voice was sure. "I want to see."

Kakashi lead Sasuke out the door – the hallways were dark – and up a back set of stairs, away from prying eyes, and then Kakashi pushed open a swinging door and everything was just bright.

Sunlight, warm and cheery, bearing down on them and baking the earth, warming the red tiled roofs of the buildings around them, casting a golden glow on strong walls. It was more vivid, brighter, like the world was super-saturated.

Naruto would fit in well here. Sasuke ignored the _something_ he felt in his chest at that. Because this place was clearly Naruto's home. Not the drab, dark, cold place they had left.

"This way," Kakashi said lightly, and pushed him along the road. "Less prying eyes."

"Where are we going?"

"A nice field. One far away from here."

Sasuke wondered, not for the first time, whether the man was planning to kill him. And if not, whether he was purposely making it sound as though he was.

"Was it you?" Sasuke asked. "Killing all those people. Was it you?"

"Does Naruto seem the type to condone something like that?"

"No. But everyone is lied to at some point. Everyone gets tricked into - _stop it_."

"I wasn't doing anything."

"You were doing what Naruto does. Looking at me, like you're seeing someone else say the words coming out of my mouth."

"Ah. Well, you've always been predictable, Sasuke-kun."

" _What the fuck is wrong with you people?"_

"They were what we call missing nin," Kakashi explained. "Rogue ninja. Ones who have been outlawed, or are wanted for whatever reason. Usually treason. Sometimes murder."

"It's a military society. You _teach_ your children to murder."

"Yes. We also teach them how to save. How to protect themselves, their friends, their village and those who can't protect themselves. We teach them a code of honor to use along with their skills, and we are the responsibility of the nation."

"And fourteen of you, _just fourteen_ , did all… that."

"What destroyed your country is not a common skill. There was another man once, who perfected the art of bringing the dead back to life and bending them to his will. This was a bastardized version of that. They skipped the steps for the sake of ease, and recalled the soul without fixing the mind or the body." Kakashi looked at him quietly. "They found a world that would be powerless to stop them, and created a door. And ah! Look. We're here."

Furious, Sasuke looked, and couldn't see anything worth mentioning. It was a field. A big one, with three wooden posts stuck into the ground, and off to the side, a smooth polished rock of obsidian.

"What is this?"

"A memorial," was the quiet response. "Look."

"I'm looking."

"No, Sasuke. _Look_. Right there is the answer to everything you've been asking."

The rock?

"It was decided illegal by the council, you see," Kakashi continued. "He was an enemy, and a traitor. But he's there. Though Naruto has never been much of a craftsman."

So Sasuke walked over, and he looked.

It was not surprise he felt, when he found it. Amid the hundreds and hundreds of tini, neatly etched names, names of the dead, there was one at the bottom.

It had been written more than once, and crossed out, it looked like. Buffed out, smoothed over, and rewritten stubbornly, angrily in bit, wobbly letters.

'Sasuke Uchiha.'

_Naruto has never been much of a craftsman._

Sasuke couldn't move. Couldn't feel. He could just stand, numb, looking down at his own name among a list of the dead.

"I'm going to give you a choice, I think," Kakashi mused as he circled around the stone. "I won't tell you what happened if you don't want me to. Normally, I wouldn't do this. Offer a choice. But I made mistakes with you, Sasuke. Maybe I pushed you too hard, or I didn't push you hard enough. But either way, I didn't give you what you needed. So I'm letting you make up your own mind."

"Not me."

"Pardon?"

"Him. _That_ Sasuke Uchiha. Not me."

"Of course."

He thought of the frustration. Of all the things he didn't understand. Of his parents, who he'd never known, and never wanted to.

Of Naruto, telling him he just didn't understand that they could do this, _be_ this, until he did.

"Tell me," was all Sasuke said.

* * *

Naruto found Sasuke exactly where Kakashi said he'd left him. _You have ten minutes_ , Kakashi had said. _We'll be waiting outside._

Sasuke was sitting on a stool at Naruto's tiny kitchen table, in the dark, eyes trained on a small picture in a wooden frame that was standing on the counter.

"Hi." It didn't seem right, but there wasn't much else he could say.

Sasuke said nothing, still looking at the picture.

Naruto couldn't begin to tell what was going on behind those black eyes. "Kakashi said –"

"I always wanted a brother." Sasuke's voice was soft, but it cut Naruto off effectively. "When I was young. I felt like I was missing one."

"…Yeah, well. You're strong enough without one. You always were."

"He doesn't hear you, you know."

"Huh?"

"When you speak to me. Your 'other Sasuke' doesn't magically hear you."

"Sas-"

" _His_ brother Itachi killed his parents because they were going to start a war. So _he_ tried to kill you, ran away, and killed Itachi. Except he'd been wrong. Itachi loved him. So he tried to kill… everyone else, instead. Is that about right?"

Naruto swallowed. "Yeah."

"And then what?"

"Kakashi didn't tell you?"

"No."

Naruto was silent for a long time. "Stupid bastard," he whispered finally, dragging a dirty sleeve roughly across his eyes. "You fucking died on me, that's what. Goddamn you. And – and _I'm sorry_." Naruto was doubled over as if in pain, one hand braced on the door frame, face screwed up ad tears, Sasuke realized for the first time, hot tears running past clenched lids. "You _weren't supposed_ to die. You were _never_ supposed to die, I was supposed to save you and we were supposed to come back and everything was going to be fine! But I was too weak and you _saved_ me and I couldn't save you and you were bleeding everywhere and Sakura-chan was crying and _I'm so sorry_."

Sasuke let Naruto cling to him, watching, unsure what to feel as a boy he barely knew cried for someone he had never met.

"I told you," he said. "I'm not him, and he can't hear you." Naruto practically flinched and began to draw away. Sasuke roughly gripped the shoulder of his jacket and yanked him close again. " _I'm my own person_. I make my own decisions. And when my mind is made up, no one changes it. _No one_. But I would never hate… anyone for failing to bring me back to myself." Naruto's face was buried against his chest, his own lips pressed in coarse blond hair. He could feet his own breath, warm, as it ruffled straw-colored curls, feel wetness seeping through his shirt. "I would never blame them. And maybe if I lost myself that badly, Naruto, I wouldn't _want_ to be brought back. I wouldn't want to be saved. I would want, for once in my life, to do something right and do the saving."

Naruto was saved from answering by the opening of the door.

Their ten minutes were up.

* * *

The door, as Kakashi had called it, looked like a tear in the world. It didn't have a frame, it was just a jagged line, edges visible only by how it contorted the image of reality around it.

This was not the original, they told him. Kakashi had recreated it in the Hokage tower for their convenience. Sasuke didn't ask how. He just knew that the guards had drawn away now, and Naruto was whispering frantically, furiously in his ear.

"You can stay. They say you can stay, here, with me, you don't have to go back."

Sasuke just felt tired. "I am not him, Naruto. I'm not from here, I never knew my parents, and I will not be some object of guilt for you."

"You're not."

"When you look at me, you see him. You see someone you lost, and I will not be a replacement."

"I know."

"Then what the hell is this?"

"You're _Sasuke_. I didn't mean it like that!" Naruto added hurriedly, seeing the livid expression on Sasuke's face. "You're you. You're – look, you know Sai? No, of course you don't. Well, there's this guy named Sai, yeah? And he was on our team. He was Sasuke's replacement, and he was strong and pale and dark-haired and hot and socially constipated _just like Sasuke_ , but he wasn't. And I hated him. But then I got to know him, you know? And the thing is, whoever he looks as acts like, he's _Sai_. And it took me a long time, but now he's one of my best friends. Because he's _Sai._ Not because he's almost Sasuke."

"…Sasuke was your best friend."

"Yeah. He is."

"He's dead. You're using present tense."

"Yeah. 'Cause he still is. And no one's ever gonna replace him."

"And… this." Sasuke placed a hand on Naruto's shoulder. He squeezed down before running it down Naruto's back, hard. "What is this?"

"New." Naruto's eyes had closed, and he leaned forward a bit, not from the pressure Sasuke was putting on his back – he couldn't have moved the other man if he tried, the difference in their strengths was infinite – but just to be near. "This is… different. This is you and me."

"…Right."

_"I need you."_

Sasuke nodded slowly. "Right." Then he turned around and stepped into the portal. A flash of bluish light, and he was gone.

* * *

In the moments of silence that followed Sasuke's disappearance – seconds, minutes, hours, Naruto wasn't sure – he could see, in his peripheral, everyone glance at his face and look away again.

He knew his face must be reading like an open book, as always. He wondered how stupid he must look, actually _surprised_ and something like heartbreak written over every feature.

"Gonna go… room," he ended up mumbling. "Gotta… yeah. Just." More words refused to come, and he turned on his heel.

The walk back passed in the blink of an eye, and he reached his door as a warm summer drizzle started falling. Warm rain, while the sun was shining. Fox's Rain, he'd heard it called when he was younger, with a certain malevolence he hadn't understood then. The air was humid and sticky. It pressed in on his lungs, and he felt like he couldn't breathe. He unzipped his jacket, shaking off the droplets and dropping into a chair. But it had been raining harder than he'd expected, and rivulets of water were falling from his hair into his eyes, making them run.

His little apartment, usually so bright and cheery, felt stark.

The picture frame had been moved a little from its usual spot - Sasuke must have been looking at it while he was out. Four faces stared up at Naruto, frozen in time, cheery and annoyed and so, so young.

He turned and left, walking out onto the road. Barefoot, dirt turning to mud beneath his feet and squishing between his toes, he scuffed down the rough pavement, hair slowly growing limp in the rain and the fabric of his pants hanging heavily, sticking to his legs.

Stupid jerk. Thinking he could just go off like that. Who did he think he was, anyway? He was an arrogant, stupid-faced.. stupid-head.

It wasn't even the leaving, really, that hurt so much. It was the leaving without saying goodbye.

In the rain.

Lots of things ended in the rain, Naruto guessed.

He knew he was sulking. It was like after Jiraiya had died, and Shikamaru had shaken him down, asked what the hell he was doing, why the hell he wasn't at least _trying –_

Naruto stopped in the middle of the road, frowning at a chink in the cobblestones.

Trying.

Because he had tried for years and years, to get his friend back. And now Sasuke, this Sasuke who didn't know anything about anything, thought he could just swan in here, turn his nose up and swan out?

…Yeah. As _if_.

Barely aware it hadn't been his plan all along, Naruto turned on his heel and was sprinting back toward the Hokage tower – it was right in front of him - he opened the door and ran -

\- Smack into someone. There was a disturbingly loud cracking sound, a cry of surprise and annoyance, and he and the other figure went tumbling onto the cold, wet ground.

He opened his mouth to yell as the figure collapsed on top of him groaned and raised a spiky, dark-haired head.

"Sasuke?"

Sasuke glared at him, leaned over towards the ground and spat out a mouthful of rain water. "Should watch where you're going, moron. What the hell were you doing?"

"…Uh." Naruto found it hard to speak. "Coming to get you."

Sasuke snorted. "Idiot. I was coming back."

"…Huh?"

"I had to tell Suigetsu I wasn't dead. Tell him he was the leader now."

"…You came back?"

"I did." Naruto leaned in and Sasuke stopped him, one hand on his chest. "Don't forget him for me," he said in a rush. "Don't… look at me as if I'm more special. Don't let him go just because I happen to be here."

"You should know by now." It hurt to talk. "I never stop chasing people. And once I've got them, I never let them go. Ever."

* * *

It was so quiet here in the afternoon. No training teams here today, just them, the empty field and the buzzing of cicadas.

"Hey," was all Naruto said in greeting, sinking down cross-legged in front of the stone. "Sorry I haven't been by in a while. Stuff's been happening."

The stone said nothing. That was fine. Sasuke had never said much, either.

"So I think I met your reincarnation. Something like that, anyway. It's great. He's… not everything you were, and he's a lot of things you weren't."

A pause. The sound of the wind rusting like the trees, kicking up leaves on the ground and ruffling his hair.

"I miss you." His fingers fiddled with a wrapped object in his lap. "You're always ahead of me. Always leaving people behind. Couldn't even wait in the afterlife for me, you jerk. Had to beat me there, too." Naruto paused a moment to collect his thoughts. A flock of small birds burst from the trees, flitting across the blue sky. Leaves twirled in the air as they drifted to the ground. The warm summer breeze swept through the tall grass. "I'm realizing things, though. I had it all wrong. I thought… for a really long time… I guess I kind of thought I wasn't fit to be Hokage." He laughed. "Stupid, right? Me, not Hokage? But… I couldn't save you, and… I thought that meant it could never happen. You were my first steps. How I'd prove myself. You'd be my most trusted advisor and highest-ranking officer and I just couldn't be Hokage without saving you first. But I get it now. It means I _can't_ stop. It means I have to try harder. No matter what, I need to keep going.

"I've kept this for a long time. And Sakura says it's time to let go. That's… really dumb, because I won't. Ever. But I think it's time you had this. Couldn't bury you with it – stupid fuckers were going to dissect you, had to b- had to take care of you before they got there. But you can have it now, okay? And I'm expecting you to fucking wear it, because – yeah. So."

With great ceremony, he unwrapped the old, faded hitai-ate from its package and set it in front of the stone.

* * *

The rain ended around midnight, and Konoha awoke to a fresh morning, summer in the air and the darkness of the previous day washed all away.

As the first golden rays of the sun pushed their way over the horizon and filled the bottom of the sky with golden warmth, two boys stood atop the Hokage Monument, wind in their hair, eyes far away, watching it rise.

"This'll be my head one day," Naruto said suddenly.

"…Your inanity is impressive,"

"I'm serious. Here in stone. It'll be huge! Everyone'll see it. Forever and ever. Did you know," Naruto said conspiratorially, "ours are bigger than the ones in Sand. I'm gonna be bigger than Gaara."

"Right."

"'Cause I'm going to be Hokage, obviously," Naruto said. A smile was spreading across his face. It, like this new enthusiasm, brought a rosy glow of excitement to his face that Sasuke had not seen before. It suited him.

"Hokage, huh."

"Best one ever."

"You think you're ready for it?"

"Now? …Not really. But soon. And, hey. You ready for this? For life? Ninjas and midnight missions and weird guys in masks?"

"Not really. But we've got time."

"Yeah."

There was silence for a while, until Naruto said suddenly, "Plus there's benefits."

"Oh?"

"Jiraiya said ninja can do ceiling sex." Naruto's voice was thoughtful. "He might have been lying, though."

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr](http://rosalui.tumblr.com/) l [LJ](http://rosalui.livejournal.com/)


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